


Between Us

by HungryLibrary



Series: No sleep for the homesick [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/F, First posted to Tumblr, Pre-Relationship, bc it's before she came out and that's how i'm dealing with it, bonding over things you've lost, hurt-comfort, pidge gets no pronouns from allura's perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-03
Updated: 2017-11-03
Packaged: 2019-01-16 00:40:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12332028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HungryLibrary/pseuds/HungryLibrary
Summary: Pidge isn't the only one up late tonight.And she's not the only one dealing with ghosts either.





	Between Us

 Pidge blinks in the harsh light of the computer screen and tries to refocus both her eyes and mind connected to them. 

It’s been 65 hours and 8 minutes since Pidge had last managed more than two hours of consecutive sleep, and she’s starting to think it might be starting to affect her.

Either that or Earthing’s just weren’t meant for Galra and Altean alphabets. 

Which could be possible, she supposes. 

But sleep deprivation seems the more likely cause.

It’s also been 49 hours and 32 minutes since Pidge was kidnapped by a giant blue cat and named a defender of the universe by an alien princess hellbent on taking down the biggest empire the galaxy has ever seen, even if all she has to do it with is five strangers who can’t even properly read the controls of the weapons they’re supposed to be piloting.

Pidge has sneaking suspicion that Allura would happily chuck all five of them into a black hole if she thought it’d help them improve as Paladins and a team. 

Pidge is very grateful they managed to intentionally form Voltron yesterday. And that there are no nearby black holes to tempt Allura.

Shaking her head Pidge tries to shake the jumbled thoughts out of her mind as well.

Focus. 

Focus, focus, focus. 

Somewhere in this mess of data there might be a crumb that she could turn into a trail and trace across the galaxy to wherever Matt and Dad have been taken. 

If she can find them there’s a real chance she can rescue them now.

She’s got Shiro and his handy- Heh- Glara tech arm on her side. She’s got a giant cat mecha of her own. She’s got all sorts of incredible new tech to play with and re-purpose for her own uses. 

She’s even got the promise of a princess that if Voltron gets the chance to save her family, they will- and Pidge is pretty sure she can trust Allura to keep that promise. Allura knows what it’s like to lose people she loves. 

Princess Allura… 

It’s weird how Pidge can see more of herself in an alien princess she’s just met than she can in any of the four other humans in the Castle.

When the cryo pod had opened the first thing Allura had done was cry out-

_“Father!”_

And Pidge had been back on Earth, back in her mess of a room, back to being Katie Holt and waking up in a cold sweat with her brother’s name on her lips, her father’s face flashing before her eyes. Back to hearing the chant of  _'they’re gone they’re gone they’re gone’_  thundering in her ears in time to her hammering heartbeat. 

The memory makes Pidge swallow hard even now, the equivalent of two or so Earth days after being reminded of it. 

She hadn’t known the stranger who had fallen into Lance’s arms and put him in restraining hold a second later, but she did know what it’s like to call out for your family like that. Panicked. Desperate. Terrified.

Things like that, like the memory she’d just fallen into for a second, make sleeping hard. 

On Earth she'd had dealt with that by working instead, and not much has changed since she got thrown into space. 

The only real difference is she might actually be able to do something with what she learns. She might actually be able to find Matt and Dad bring them home to Earth and to Mom.

Mom. Mom who had probably heard by now that Katie’s alias has gone missing. 

Mom who’d watched Katie build a scanner powerful enough to listen to the edge’s of their solar system and who might be making another one of her own now.

Setting it up and listening just like Pidge had, sitting in the dark with Gunther in her lap, hoping to hear something, hearing nothing. Going home to an empty house. Going up to Matt’s room or Katie’s or the one she used to share with Dad and sitting there in the dark instead, looking around in the dim light that hides the dust and the year-old dates on all the science journals and pretending, for a second that they aren’t really gone, that she hasn’t been left behind.  

The thought makes Pidge feel sick. 

Pushing up her glasses she rubs impatiently at the telltale burn behind her eyes. 

She doesn’t have time for this. 

Wallowing in homesickness and guilt isn’t going to help her figure out where the other prisoners got sent, or make predicting the Galra’s next move any easier. And she’s going to have to do both if she wants to make any difference out here, here at the start of a war with a ruthless, tyrannical empire that’s been gaining strength and expanding for the last ten millennia. 

Scowling Pidge shoves her glasses back in place and bends over her computer again, determined to force the lines of code into making sense.

She’s so focused on that one goal she almost doesn’t see the flicker of movement to her right. 

Looking around she sees someone at the far end of corridor, walking slowly.

It’s the princess.

And she looks… off. Odd. Wrong.

Maybe it’s because she isn’t striding around purposefully for once, maybe it has to do with the loose clothes Pidge assumes are an Altean nightgown. 

Or maybe it’s the lost look on her face.

The way she doesn’t look round or see Pidge even though Pidge is sitting right out in the open. Maybe it has to do with how she’s trailing her fingers along the wall as she walks, feeling her way along as if the Castle might vanish if she doesn’t keep checking on it.

In the end it doesn’t matter what makes Pidge thinks Allura looks wrong. All that’s important is Pidge thinks she knows _why_ the princess is padding listlessly though her empty home when she’s supposed to be sleeping.

It’s something Pidge used to do a lot too.

She watches Allura turn a bend and disappear. She hesitates, unease twisting in her gut until she can’t ignore it anymore. 

And then she gives in.

The laptop snaps quietly as she shuts it. Picking it up she hauls herself to her feet and sets off down the corridor, now focused on her new objective for the night.

Find Allura. See how she’s doing, see if she’s feeling okay, and if she’s not-

And Pidge already knows she isn’t.

-If she’s not, then maybe talk to her about it a little. If she wants to. Or something. 

Just try, basically. Not because Pidge thinks she’ll be any good at it but because she’s the only one here, and she does know a bit about what Allura’s feeling. 

That has to be better than nothing. Right?

-

Allura wanders down the corridor, not heading anywhere in particular as she runs a hand along the wall, fingers trailing the familiar cool patterns and gaps. 

The Castle, her home, is filled with unfamiliar silence. 

It’s a silence that has reigned here for longer than her family once ruled over Altea, but it is alien to Allura. 

And so strange to find it here of all places. To walk down these halls without meeting anyone or hearing the constant announcements filtering over the coms. To be followed by the empty echo of her own footsteps and turn each corner with no one there to meet her, no technician or guard or ambassador smiling as she greets them as the lifelong friends they so often are- 

Were, Allura corrects herself with a bitter smile. As they were when they lived, all of ten thousand years ago. 

But ten thousand years of silence has settled over the Castle of the Lions like a curse, and there is no one to greet her, no matter how many turns she takes.

Lifeless, she thinks as she passes a doorway and cool air opens up under her fingertips.

Even though she and Coran are still here, even with the new Paladins of Voltron making themselves comfortable in their rooms, the Castle is lifeless and dead compared to how she always knew it. With how it  _should_  be.

Coming to a stop at the door of the dining hall, Allura traces her gaze over the familiar long table and chairs, the ghosts she can still see sitting there.

The room has been washed clean of the evidence of that surprisingly fruitful food fight. Now there is no one and nothing to distract from what is missing, the people whose absence she can feel as if their silhouettes had been cut out of the air.

She has so many memories of this room. 

Memories of family instead of strangers turned allies, of safety instead of frustration undercut with fear and desperation. 

She has these memories, but they are not old enough to be just memories yet. 

They live and breathe inside of her as fresh as if they had happened yesterday- Which they had, from her perspective if from no one else’s. 

The gap between what she knows from reading the Castle logs and what she still expects to see as she walks it’s halls is inconsolable. It makes her pull a little bit of the heavy silence into her chest with each breath she takes. It makes her eyes sting as she stares at the empty seats at the dining room table. It- 

“It feels weird, doesn’t it?”

Allura spins around at the voice. 

“What?” She blurts out, the word coming out sharp as her eyes fall on the fluffy mess of Pidge’s hair and the green and white of the Paladin’s overlarge sweater.  

She hadn’t expected anyone else to be awake and wandering the Castle halls at this time. Everyone aside from Coran should be resting in their quarters, and yet here is Pidge, still in day clothes and with an Earthling computer tucked under one arm.

“The Castle.” The Paladin waves a hand at the dinning hall beyond Allura. 

“You lived here back before Zarkon killed everyone, right? So it probably feels weird to you now, empty but also full of the people who should still be here. Like walking through a graveyard.”

Caught off guard by the interruption- as well as the fact that Pidge just spoken an entire sentence that did not have anything to do with technology, upgrades, or scans- Allura finds herself staring back blankly.  

Empty but full is a good way to put it. And the Castle’s silence does remind Allura of a tomb, now she thinks of it. A tomb full of restless ghosts.

And at least one restless Paladin, apparently.

Drawing herself more properly upright Allura schools her expression into composure.  

“You should be resting.” She tries to fix Pidge with a stern gaze as she says it. “Tomorrow will be busy as well, you five have still a lot of training to do before you can properly fight as Voltron.”

Pidge, looking wholly unaffected by Allura’s attempted stern look, raises an incredulous eyebrow. 

“And  _you’ve_  still got a whole Castle to de-bug, on top of putting us through our paces.” The Paladin’s tone is very dry. “I’m sorting though Rover’s data trying to find some clues about where all the prisoners we weren’t in time to rescue might have been sent. What’s your excuse for still being up?”

Allura scowls. Of all the alien species who could have ended up in her Castle, why did it have to end up being ones as argumentative as Earthlings? 

She opens her mouth to snap back, perhaps to even try ordering Pidge to sleep even though it likely wouldn’t do any good- the 'no princess of ours’ stance had apparently not changed at all since it spurred Allura into starting a rather childish but effective fight-

-and stops herself just in time.

The prisoners. 

She had forgotten, in the rush of reclaiming all the Lions and defeating a Galra battle ship, that Pidge had deviated from the original plan in order to rescue prisoners from that same ship. 

She had also forgotten the reason Pidge later gave for this. 

A missing father and brother. A family left broken. A very personal reason to hate the Galra and the empire Zarkon had built.

Looking at the Green Paladin again, Allura sees a hollowness to Pidge’s face. 

Tired shadows linger under brown eyes, tight muscles clench unconsciously at Pidge’s jaw and there’s something familiar about the slight slump of Pidge’s shoulders. Something Allura has glimpsed in every reflective surface she’s passed since waking up to find her own family gone.

Allura feels her posture fail and droop again as all of her irritation with the Paladin drains away. 

“I don’t know.” She admits quietly. “And to answer your earlier question, yes. It does feel strange.”

“Too quiet.” Pidge suggests, voice flat and knowing.

Allura bows her head and nods.

“Too quiet.” The words leaving her lips reluctantly, her throat growing a little tighter with each one. “And yet at the same time I feel as though I can still hear them, even see them sometimes, like glimpses at the corner of my sight.”

What Allura sees out of the corner of her eye right now is an uncertain shift of white and green. 

Pidge hesitates, lingers for moment, and then steps over to join Allura at entrance of the dining hall, carefully keeping some distance between them by leaning on the opposite edge of the door frame.

A silence wraps around them. A silence Allura cannot stand to listen to right now.

“I did try to sleep.”

Fingering the cuffs of her dressing gown she pictures the Castle mice as she had left them, curled up in a fluffy pile on her pillow.

“I know how important it is that we rest, so I did try. But…" 

Swallowing hard she feels her chest ache even at just the memory. 

"As I was drifting off I thought I heard him. My father. Wishing me goodnight. Just as, just as he always used to.”

The pain in her throat makes Allura stumble and leaves her eyes stinging worse than ever. The dining hall blurs slightly and she blinks furiously to bring it back into focus, pushing the threat of tears aside.

“And I know I can speak to a hologram of him whenever I want to, but that isn’t really him, just a shadow of his memories…” Just another ghost. “…He can’t… truly hear me now.”

Her throat closes up. 

Shutting her eyes Allura focuses on controlling her breathing and keeping it steady. She does not want to cry. She is a little afraid that if she starts she will not be able to stop.

A long slow sigh fills the air. There’s a soft thud as Pidge’s head falls against the door frame.

“You’d think it’d be comforting or something, still having part of them with you.” The Paladin’s mutter is low with bitterness and anger.

“But it just hurts.”

Pidge goes on, sounding all the more angry for not having anything more concrete than imaginings and dreams to blame the hurt upon- A feeling Allura knows from when she woke up in room that was dark and empty and completely devoid of any sign of Alfor.  

"Because the next second you remember they’re not really there, they’re gone, and in a way it’s like-“

Pidge’s voice catches suddenly and goes quiet. 

Opening her eyes Allura watches the Paladin hunch inward and feels her own aching heart echoed in the the trembling line of Pidge’s lips, the hard, brittle light burning in brown eyes that stare into nothing. 

”… it’s like losing them all over again.“ She finishes for Pidge, for herself, for both of them.

A jerky nod from the Paladin. 

"Yeah." 

The word comes out rough and scratchy, makes Pidge flinch and flush with shame.

When Pidge glances over in embarrassment Allura very purposefully meets the Paladin’s gaze, holds it so that Pidge can see the dampness at the corners of her own eyes.

Some of the tension fades from Pidge’s face.

The sound of a throat clearing is almost comically loud in the quiet and Allura can’t help the faint upwards twist of her lips at hearing it now, right after sharing such a raw and delicate moment. 

But perhaps Pidge deliberately exaggerated the sound, because the Paladin’s mouth is quirking up into a wry little smile of it’s own.

"Loosing people fucking sucks, doesn't it?”

Allura laughs- a bark of surprise at the wording and the tone Pidge put on so serious a sentiment- and shocks herself both with the sound and the realization that she can still laugh, even if just bitterly, after everything that has happened.

The air only rings for a moment with Allura strangely placed mirth, but it’s long enough to turn Pidge’s crooked smile into a small grin.  

Seeing that, Allura decides the break in the gloom between them is good thing. Good enough for it not to matter if it was achieved by a somewhat irreverent or inappropriate attitude, the dead and the missing would not know if they laughed, and would probably want them to not be utterly miserable in any case.

So Allura let’s her smile grow into something real as well. 

“It  _is_  a pain in the yulschtrix.” She says in the most agreeable tone she can muster, crossing her arms casually as she leans back against the door frame. 

“Which only makes me that much more eager to return Zarkon the favor ten times over.”

Pidge snickers. Allura listens and feels an inordinate amount of satisfaction at having coaxed out the sharp little chuckle. 

Glass flashes startlingly bright under the dimmed rest-cycle lights as Pidge looks up at her, grin somehow becoming warmer and at the same time taking on a dangerous, eager edge.

“You know what, Allura?" 

The Paladin doesn’t leave room for a reply before going on, tone friendly in a way Allura has never heard from Pidge before. 

"I think you’re exactly the sort of royalty I can follow after all.”

Allura stares. 

She isn’t sure if she should take that as a clumsy compliment or a retroactive insult. 

Pidge probably meant it as the former though, considering the Paladin is a blunt and straightforward person with no hint thus far of passive-aggressive slyness, so Allura will treat it as such.

“…Good.” Allura says finally. “You don’t have much of a choice in it, but I am glad to hear that from you anyway.”

That gets another snort from Pidge, lighter and more amused than the last one.

“Fair point.”

Pushing off the door frame the Paladin’s arms lift in quick stretch. 

“I’m gonna go back to finishing this.” Pidge says with a yawn, arms lowering and fingers tapping at the extraordinarily primitive Earthing computer. “And then I’ll hopefully be tired enough to just black out as soon as my head hits the pillow. It was good talking to you, Princess. See you in the morning.”

Offering up an awkward little wave the Paladin turns and heads down the corridor, obviously a bit rusty when it came to the art of politely ending a conversation.

Allura watches Pidge go with a smile. 

“Sleep well, Pidge.”  

Almost at the corner, Pidge stops and slowly looks back, frowning slightly. 

The look makes Allura think the Paladin might be deliberating something internally. She tilts her head at Pidge, wanting to ask what the problem is but also not wanting to interrupt.

Brown eyes firm as they meet Allura’s. The Green Paladin swallows, throat bobbing silently, and says softly-

“…Goodnight, Allura. Sleep well.”

With that Pidge slips around the corner and out of sight.

And Allura is left staring, heart pounding out a slow but strangely thundering beat as she hears another voice whisper goodnight to her, a different someone she used to also have late night talks with when sleep proved hard to find.

For some reason remembering her father does not hurt as much as it did before. 

Taking a deep breath Allura casts one last glance back at the empty dining hall and then moves off down the corridor, opposite the way Pidge had gone and towards her own private rooms.

It was time to give getting some rest another try. 

Allura has the feeling she will have a better time of it, now.

Now the silence of the Castle has been lightened enough to let her breathe without drowning. Now that she has a real voice to mix with and soften the one that has been haunting her, a tangible 'good night’ from someone who is here, instead of the ghost of one from someone who was lost long ago.

She’s glad Pidge found her tonight. 

Slightly awkward though it had been, she’s grateful they talked, feels better for knowing that someone else understands this brand of loneliness. 

That is almost the same as not being alone in a way. Or at least that’s how it feels to Allura. 

-

Back pressed against the wall, Pidge lets out a sigh of relief as she listens to the princess’s footsteps fade away. 

“Mission success.” Pidge whispers to herself. 

“You didn’t accidentally make her cry and even got her to smile and laugh a little. Job well done, Gunderson. You also managed to avoid ugly crying in front of her- Maybe next time you can get through it without loosing half your body fluids in sweat, either.”

Next time. Was there going to be a next time?

Was she going to start making a habit of searching the Castle at night, checking to see if Allura was up and wandering around again?

Probably, yeah. 

Talking to her hadn’t just been nerve wracking, it’d been nice. It’d felt good. Like venting to a rubber duck or similar when she got stuck programming. And she’d even gotten to hear Allura use what sounded like an Altean swear word- Pidge mentally filed 'Yulschtrix’ away for later research and possible use- and that in it’s self is worth some embarrassment.

And getting to hear Allura laugh feels like it’s worth a lot more, for some reason. 

Peeling herself off the wall Pidge cracks her stiff neck and sets off again, this time with a slight bounce in her step.


End file.
